Girls & Football South Africa: Help Us Score!

Girls & Football SA Report March 2012

By Jos Dirkx - Founder and Director

The Girls & Football SA team has been as busy as ever this quarter! We started the year with a strategic planning session that mapped out our game plan for 2012. With new faces and partners on our side, we are able to expand our reach to ensure more girls and young women in South Africa get the opportunity to learn and grow through sport. As South Africa’s first organization to focus on an entirely girls-only space for development, we want to ensure that our programming continues to cater towards young women.

On March 24th 2012, Girls & Football SA attended the Cup of Dreams in Pretoria, South Africa’s biggest all girls tournament, with 26 teams of 18 players between the ages of 10-19. We were invited to fly up from Cape Town to host our safe space workshops, and share our programming with the girls.

In the lead up of the tournament, Girls & Football SA staff consulted the tournament organizers on which specific topics the workshops should focus on to best cater the girls’ needs. Based on the responses, Girls & Football SA staff designed a new series of short programs to be carried out throughout the day.

By keeping workshops short, effective and informative, we were able to reach a large number of girls with our information.

During the tournament, Girls & Football SA set up a tent in which workshops were held on the following topics;

We were glad to see that although we were piloting new, controversial workshops about sexuality and identity, the girls’ and coaches responses were very positive. The girls were receptive to and interested in the information we were sharing and actively participated in group discussions.

We created a short baseline study so that we would have a greater understanding of the current knowledge on the topics in question, in addition to having the possibility to measure the impact of the workshops. The baseline study was carried out at the beginning of the workshop and at the end of the workshop, after the information had been dispersed.

We also carried out interviews with several of the players, with South Africa’s first female match announcer, and with Girls & Football SA board member and FIFA instructor Fran Hilton Smith. Stay tuned; in a few weeks we’ll have an awesome video highlighting the success of the day!

Your generous donations helped us reach girls 200 girls directly, and 700 girls indirectly in an effective and efficient way with information crucial to their development. We are so grateful for your continued support. Without your contributions, we would not be able to carry out our work, and we are very thankful for all of your donations. Please keep supporting our work, and stayed tuned in the exciting months ahead!

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